"CN" 2000-2009 Marriage

CNBC m@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2005-07-09 published
Kareen MADIAN and David
WOLF -- Match:
By Judith TENENBAUM,
Saturday,July 9, 2005, Page M4
Ultimately,KareenMelanieMADIAN would conclude that if she
mixed all of the ingredients for her perfect man, David Daniel
WOLF would crystallize. However, her first phone interview with
him, for a syndicated radio program called Canada's Business
Report, where she was a producer, left the impression he was
haughty and aloof.
A colleague assured her, however, that she shouldn't judge him
by that first impression: "He's an economist and needs to sound
like he knows what he's talking about."
So in August, 2002, at the show's guest-appreciation night at
Jump Café and Bar, she decided to take the initiative and try
to find him.
"Half of Bay Street was out, and I realized that I didn't know
what these people looked like and was about to leave," says Mr.
WOLF, who was then senior economist and chief interest rate strategist
at RBCCapitalMarkets.But then a "very cute girl" approached
him and said, "Can I ask you a really stupid question?"
He replied that she would be surprised at the questions people
asked him.
Her query, of course, was whether he was the man she had interviewed
a few months earlier. She had already recognized his voice, however,
and led him over to meet the group from her radio program.
ThatOctober, when she called Mr.
WOLF for another interview,
he floored her with his response: "This isn't our usual time.
Are you calling to ask me out?"
Mr. WOLF admits it was the first time he had used such an approach.
"I'm usually pretty shy. I think it reflected something deeper.
I just kind of blurted it out."
An ensuing buzz zoomed through her office when she confided,
"I think I just made a date with David
WOLF. I called for an
interview and all of a sudden we're going out for drinks."
She missed his signals at first, however, and assumed that, as
the youngest economist on the street, he was just looking for
professional camaraderie. Several dinners later, the façade was
lifted. "I realized we were actually dating," she says.
Their paths had seemed destined to cross. A decade earlier, they
had lived a short distance apart in North Toronto, and his sister,
Susan, had often extolled her brother to teenage classmate Ms.
MADIAN.
His sister once borrowed Ms.
MADIAN's library card and
neglected to return a book. Harangued by the library, Ms.
MADIAN
followed up with a phone call, and Mr.
WOLF senior had acknowledged,
"That sounds like Susie."
"It was a weird, small world thing," Mr.
WOLF says. "She knew
my sister, and had spoken to my father."
Parental influence had prompted the entrée of both into economics.
It was her mother's interest in
CNBC that precipitated Ms.
MADIAN's
pursuit of business journalism at Ryerson University. She advised
her daughter, "Where you have unrest, unemployment, people totally
disenfranchised, you will find there is an economic reason for
it, and there are lots of stories there." After a period at CTV,
Ms. MADIAN gained an internship with
CNBC in New York, and is
now a Web editor of moneysense.ca.
Mr. WOLF, now 29, whose father is a professor of economics at
York University, is a graduate of Princeton University in that
discipline and currently chief strategist and head of Canadian
economics at Merrill Lynch Canada.
Intoxicated for five months by the vibrant Ms.
MADIAN,
Mr.WOLF,
who was in Europe on business, impulsively urged her to join
him in Paris. A plane seat in doubt, his plucky lady fabricated
a tale of romantic distress where she desperately needed to meet
her fiancé. "'Husband' was taking it too far," she says with
a laugh. It worked.
Together, they savoured the nirvana of Paris. "We were on the
Left Bank, stopped for a crepe. It was this amazing feeling...
in Paris, worlds away," she says. "Going on vacation with someone
is a big test. We realized we could stand each other and wanted
to spend more time together."
The couple had discussed marriage, and religious differences
were never at issue. "I'm Christian. David is Jewish," Ms.
MADIAN
says. "We wouldn't call ourselves religious -- more spiritual.
If we have children, we'll expose them to both our cultures."
In October, 2003, they celebrated the anniversary of their first
date in Las Vegas. When Mr.
WOLF knelt on the grass at the Bellagio
claiming he felt ill, she visualized a proposal. "I thought,
oh my God, this is it! He's pretending to be sick and is going
to propose in front of the light show. It's going to be perfect,"
Ms. MADIAN recalls.
But her excitement turned to fear as she assisted him back to
his room in the throes of nausea.
Surreptitiously, that Christmas holiday Mr.
WOLF had obtained
her parents' blessing. Her mother, Arpi
MADIAN, says she "bonded
beautifully with him," noting that they went ring shopping together
at a family jeweller where she knew her daughter's ring preferences.
"The minute we met David, we loved him. Frankly as a mom, I was
so relieved he had active brain cells," she adds with a laugh.
"He's extremely intelligent, but not arrogant, like some, or
impatient with those who can't keep up. He's quite humble and
sweet."
Finally, on January 10, 2004, Ms.
MADIAN's birthday, a day he
always purported too mundane for a proposal, he offered a ring.
At the Le Royal Meridien King Edward hotel, on June 11, the couple
recited personal vows before Reverend Frank
FOLZ.
The newly minted
Mrs. WOLF, 26, who had fantasized about being a bride since her
"Barbie" days at the age of 5, stunned guests by looking like
a doll herself in an Oleg Cassini gown layered in organza, with
crystal bands at the waist mimicking a hair band, punctuated
by her ponytail and long cathedral veil trailing behind.
There wasn't a dry eye when the newlyweds danced the bolero.
Her mother recalls emotionally, "David had two left feet, and
you could see he did it just for her."